3 comments:

I've been doing this blog for more than six months now. It has started to bother me that I've been amassing quite a body of work here that's not really good for much beyond publishing on the web. Most of the images here were taken with the little pocket camera that I keep with me at all times. The image quality that I was getting out of the trusty old Pentax Optio was fine for publishing in such small size on the web (usually 400x300 pixels) but I would need much higher resolutions to sell these pictures for any commercial use.

At the PhotoPlus Expo in New York, I shopped around at the different camera manufacturers to find a camera small enough to carry with me but with true professional quality. I decided to purchase the Fujifilm F10. It's a good bit larger than the tiny Optio, but it still qualifies as a small pocket camera. The quality is stunning. It's a 6 megapixel camera, but there's a lot more to quality than megapixels. Most small digital cameras create a lot of noise in the image at higher ISO settings. The Fuji F10 has virtually no noise at 400, a small amount of noise at 800, and a very usable 1600 setting. This is far and away better than anything I've seen from the other manufacturers. Fuji is doing a great job with image quality.

Rick, I'm one of your anonymous fans (found you via instapundit many months ago). I look forward to your photos on my RSS feed every morning! Thanks for the camera review - I've been suffering with an old canon A40 - just fine for the web, but 2.0 megapix just doesn't cut it for any photo manipulation and enlargement. I don't have to worry about the professional angle! I think you've helped me find my husband's Christmas present to me! :)

Q... good to hear from you!.. I had a really hard time deciding between the Fuji F10 and the Fuji Z1. The Z1 is a very small, sexy (comes in black) machine that also has good picture quality but not as good as the F10. Carrying the Z1 would be more like the Pentax Optio S4i which is so small and lightweight that you can easily carry it in a jack or or cargo-pants-pocket without any trouble. There's an old saying... "any camera you have with you is better than the one that's at home". Even a disposable camera is better than a 400 dollar digital that you don't have with you. But I finally decided to go with the extra quality and bet that the few extra ounces wouldn't deter me.